by Colin Forbes
'Didn't that strike you as odd?' Tweed suggested. 'That the killer should leave both wallets on his victims? He could so easily have taken them away-then no connection with the UTS would have been made.'
'Yes, it did,' Beck admitted. 'We couldn't think of an explanation
…'
'The killer wanted the connection with the UTS established – in case the bodies surfaced. To point you in the wrong direction – and away from the real reason the bullion was stolen.'
That's an assumption,' Beck pointed out.
'And a very valid one, I'd say,' Romer intervened.
'Where exactly was this corpse found here in the harbour?' Tweed asked.
'Under the very lee of that far side of the harbour. The very first time the scoop was sent down it brought up this body and one large rock. We were lucky – the dredger must have scooped up the big rock first, then lifted the body. Had it been the other way round the corpse would have been smashed to a pulp – maybe never even noticed. You see the rocks it is bringing up being dropped into the barge alongside.'
Paula turned away, as though examining the inner harbour. She had a sudden vision of a corpse bloated to at least twice its original size, the huge rock smashing down and bursting it like a pricked balloon. She swallowed, took a deep breath. Beck had changed the subject.
'I don't suppose it means anything, but a bloodstained coat was discovered in a luggage locker at Cornavin Gare. Probably worn by the man who killed Gaston Blanc. Forensic have estimated his probable height and weight. Giant of a man. Here are the details.'
He handed Tweed a folded sheet which Tweed tucked in his wallet without looking at it. 'Time to go?' he suggested, still watching the dredger, the barge alongside.
'Nothing more here for us,' Beck agreed. He talked as he joined Tweed in the walk back to the car while Paula chatted to Colonel Romer behind them. 'You like all the bits and pieces, I know. Gaston Blanc's car was discovered abandoned by the roadside near Broc, the place where the Nestle factory is. God knows why!'
'Interesting,' remarked Tweed.
'Is it? Oh, a final titbit. My assistant who sorts reports before I see them is on holiday. I've got a fool of a girl who dumps everything on my desk standing in. The titbit? A Nestle truck and its Turkish driver has gone missing en route to make a delivery to Brussels. Big deal, as the Americans would say.'
'I think we'll fly back to London tomorrow,' Tweed said, stretching out his legs in the armchair in his bedroom. They had enjoyed a good dinner and Paula had joined him for a final chat.
'You still think we're chasing phantoms and ghosties?' asked Paula.
'I've moved into a neutral zone, but there are connections which keep bugging me.'
'Such as?'
'Four men now with their throats cut ear to ear. Dikoyan, the Armenian who crashed the explosives truck into Turkey. Then two members of the UTS dragged out of the Rhine. Same method. Including dumping them in water. The fourth, Gaston Blanc – who made timers and control boxes…'
'You don't know he'd made them. He might have just been going to start making them.'
True. But why was he murdered before he'd done the job?'
'That's the lot?' Paula asked.
'The explosive technique used on the bank vaults. I saw your expression when Romer used the word implosion. Took you back to Blakeney, didn't it?'
'Yes. It's a long way, though, from Basle to Blakeney. And I wonder how Bob Newman is getting on?'
'We'll hear when he's good and ready. One question bothers me more than any other. I feel it could be the key to the entire conspiracy – if there is one.'
'What's that?'
'We may know more after Bellenger has examined those pieces of debris in the executive case Romer gave me…" 'You can be the most annoying man. What was the question?'
'How the gold bullion was smuggled out of Basle – and what was its ultimate destination?'
Waiting for Paula, who was collecting the air tickets for the return to Heathrow, Tweed sat staring out of the window at the sheen-surfaced Rhine, watching the occasional barge glide past. She returned when he was dialling the number of the Zurcher Kredit Bank, calling Romer.
'Colonel, Tweed here. One more question I'd like the answer to. You seem au fait with all the action the police took the night of the robbery. I presume they set up road-blocks?'
'The moment they were alerted. The gang cut out the alarm system – but missed one box. Of course it had to be the defective one – reacted half an hour after it activated. It was tested by experts and did the same thing. Went off a half-hour after activation.'
'And the road-blocks?'
'Set up immediately. They reckoned they missed the large truck later found abandoned at the airport – with traces of gold on the floor. That's why they were so sure the Fokker Friendship plane took out the bullion.'
'What I want to know is how far out they set up their road-blocks?'
'Oh, on the outskirts of the city, of course. Ten to fifteen kilometres from this bank, I gather…'
'No road-blocks were set up closer in, then? Near the centre of the city?'
'No. It seemed pointless. A Sunday night, the streets deserted, a half-hour start.'
Thank you.'
Tweed put down the receiver and explained the conversation to Paula as she handed him his ticket. Paula listened, then frowned.
'I don't get the significance of your question.' 'It's odd,' Tweed responded dreamily. 'I find myself thinking like a detective again. All the old training, the experience comes back. A weird feeling.. .'
'You didn't answer my question,' Paula pointed out. 'I don't believe I did. But I'm like a man wandering through a fog – seeing silhouettes I can't identify yet.' 'And you can be the most maddening man to work for.' 'Monica would agree with that. Next stop, London.. .'
19
It was eleven o'clock at night when Klein came back to La Montagne. In the kitchen Hipper stared at him in surprise. He hadn't expected Klein to return for days. But it was typical of Klein: you never knew when he was going to turn up without warning.
'How is it going?' Klein asked Chabot.
The Frenchman took the watchmaker's glass out of his eye and gazed back. Spread across the table was a whole mass of the precision pieces of metal Gaston Blanc had patiently manufactured in his workshop.
'Ten of the devices are ready,' he said.
'You are working faster than I expected. Fifty more and you are finished.'
'I'm familiar with the mechanism now. So I work much more quickly. The whole lot? Three days from now.'
'I am packing them in the special case,' Hipper interjected. 'I pack them as he completes a set of five…'
'And all of them tested – like the first one?' Klein demanded.
In the fluorescent light his lean face seemed whiter than ever. More like a mask than the face of a human being. He loomed over the table as Hipper replied.
'Oh, yes. We test them five at a time. Well after dark -and the locals know I wander about on my own, so there is no risk. They don't like me, which helps.'
'I have a question.' Chabot lit a Gauloise. 'I have been thinking
…'
'A dangerous habit,' Klein suggested in his cold voice.
'I have a question,' Chabot repeated, 'and I want an answer before I assemble one more device. I calculate that with this number of timers – and the five control boxes -there must be enormous explosive power involved. Don't forget, I'm an expert. What exactly is the job? And how many other men are involved? I'm working in the dark no longer.'
Klein studied the Frenchman, who kept staring straight back at him, showing not a hint of fear. A very hard case, Klein was thinking. Well, that's what we'll need. Someone not nervous of spilling a lot of blood. He'll have to be told something. He made one last attempt to stall Chabot.
'We are working on the cell principle. Only three men know each other. I insist on the tightest security. The success of an operation of this m
agnitude depends on it.'
'What operation,' Chabot persisted.
'Thirty people in the team altogether,' Klein replied. 'We have them in place now. All except two. I am hiring these two key personnel as soon as I leave here.'
'What operation?' Chabot asked again.
'We are going to hold up the gateway to Europe. We are going to threaten to close down a whole continent…' His voice was rising in pitch, he punctuated his statements with a curious chopping movement of his right hand as he went on. 'We are going to give a demonstration of the terrible explosive power at our command. There will be casualties to show we are not bluffing. We shall demand -receive – an enormous sum of money. That gigantic fortune is already available – although those who hold it have no idea what it is really for. Now! No more talk. Get on with your job. I shall collect the timers in three days. Someone will be waiting to move them to the target. Wiedersehen! '
Klein gestured to Hipper to join him, left the room. Chabot paused in his work for a few minutes. As he'd spoken the eyes of Klein had bulged hypnotically, had seemed to change colour. It must have been the fluo-rescents Chabot decided.
He was shaken by the vehemence of Klein's outburst, by the details of his plan. Then he shrugged. For two hundred thousand francs he should worry about the spilling of some blood. But of one thing Chabot was sure. Afterwards all hell would break loose in Europe. What a good job he had decided to leave France forever once he had his hands on the big money – to emigrate to Quebec. They'd never find him there.
'All the Luxembourg scuba divers you recruited are hidden away in Holland,' Klein told Hipper in answer to his question. 'We must have hired every thug in your tiny country.'
'Holland?' Hipper queried. 'The target is there?'
'You know better than to ask questions like that. Holland is a good staging post.'
'Ten foreigners are a lot to hide. Won't they be noticed?'
'We have taken over a camping site. They are housed in campers. Only the two who speak Dutch leave the site to fetch in supplies. It is foolproof.'
Klein omitted to mention the number hidden away on the site was larger than ten. He sensed the little man was becoming nervous, keyed up. It was a problem he had foreseen. He had to keep them all occupied until the moment for the great assault came.
'What about Chabot?' he added. 'When I spoke to you on the phone, warning you about the delivery of the timers, you did say he was restless. I don't like that.'
'He is absorbed in his work at the moment. As long as he takes his midnight walk along the gorge where the railway once ran he is manageable. How much longer do we have before the operation is mounted?'
'As long as it takes.'
20
'Action at last,' said Pete Nield, sitting in the back of the Mercedes 280E as Newman pulled up, then turned into the car park near the Blakeney waterfront. As he turned off the ignition he had no idea he was close to the spot where Tweed had parked the same car while he waited for the Bomb Disposal team to do its job.
A brisk breeze was blowing off the sea into Norfolk and the village had a deserted look. Harry Butler, seated beside Newman, replied to Nield over his shoulder.
'Patience is what you need a little more of in this job -I've told you before. Newman knows what he's doing.'
'Don't dispute it – but hanging round in King's Lynn for days got on my wick.'
'Sorry about that,' Newman commented, adjusting the field-glasses hanging from a loop round his neck. 'I had to go to Brighton to check up on Dr Portch – that's where he came from before he bought the practice in Cockley Ford. We'll be going there to look around tonight. I'm going along to chat with the skipper of that coaster. Why don't the two of you pop into the bar on the front, have a jar. I want to appear to be on my own…'
The coaster, moored next to the tall silo, was unloading a cargo of soya bean meal. Newman could see faint white dust rising as the dock crane worked. He had been to Blakeney the day before, had learned a lot chatting to the barman in the pub facing the small harbour.
He wore a deerstalker hat, a windcheater, corduroy trousers tucked into rubber knee-length boots. Standard gear for a bird-watcher. The coaster's skipper, a certain Caleb Fox, was leaning against the sea wall, taking a swig from a hip flask. He hastily pocketed it when Newman arrived.
'Gusty sort of day,' Newman remarked. 'What's the weather going to do?'
'Piss down this afternoon. We'll be unloaded by then -God willin'.'
'Bob Newman.' He held out his hand. The skipper took hold with slithery limp fingers. Like shaking hands with a fish. There was the smell of brandy on his breath.
'Caleb Fox,' he said after staring sideways at Newman. Fox. The name suited him. A small, wide-shouldered man, he stooped like a man accustomed to dipping his head aboard ship and his eyes were foxy. 'Them's pretty powerful binoculars,' he observed. 'Mighty expensive, I reckon. The camera, too.'
'You need good equipment for bird-watching. Soya bean meal your main cargo?'
'Sick of the sight of the stuff. Runs a shuttle, we does. Across to Europort, Rotterdam, pick up our ration from one o' the big container jobs comin' up from Africa, then back here.'
'Sounds a bit boring.'
'Bloody borin'. But when you're past fifty and shippin' is in a bad way, you takes what you can get. I used to sail a ten-thousand-ton freighter. Those were the days. Dead and gone, they are.'
'How big is the coaster?'
'Seven hundred tonner.' Fox spat over the wall. 'A pea-boat compared with what I once 'ad. A man needs money, a lot of it to be 'appy in this vale of sorrows.
'You live alone?'
"Ow did you know that?'
Sudden hostility, suspicion. The foxy eyes closed to mere slits, stared at Newman for a few seconds, then looked away.
'I didn't. You just sounded lonely.'
Newman had the impression it was the brandy which was talking, that had he come along earlier Fox would not have said a word. Now he was wondering whether he had talked too much. About what? Fox's right hand reached towards his hip, then withdrew and rested on the wall. Something odd, Newman felt.
A man needs money, a lot of it… Newman could have sworn Fox had brightened up for a few seconds when he uttered the words. The skipper, reassured by Newman's reply, started talking about his favourite topic. Himself.
'You're right, lives on me own. Got a small place at Brancaster. That's along the coast – towards King's Lynn. You look well fixed, Mister, if you don't mind me saying so.'
There was a question behind the statement. Fox darted another sidelong glance at his visitor. Newman replied carefully.
'I'm a writer. I've been lucky. Brings me in a good income.' He changed the subject. 'What's that funny rattling noise?'
Fox pulled at his greasy peaked cap. 'It's the wind shaking the riggin' against the metal mast of that boat over there, the one beached on the sandbank. Rubbish they are, rich men's toys. All fibreglass and aluminium. Not real boats at all.'
'Well, I think I've changed my mind about pushing off across the marshes,' Newman remarked. 'Don't like the look of those clouds coming in.'
Told you, didn't I? Goin' to piss down…'
Newman retraced his steps back to the waterfront pub. Butler and Nield sat at a window table, two glasses of beer in front of them. Newman walked to the bar, ordered a small Scotch, downed it, glanced at the two men and made his way back to the Mercedes.
His two companions came strolling along five minutes later, climbed back into the car. Nield again occupied a rear seat and spoke as Newman turned on the ignition.
'Found out something interesting talking to the landlord. That skipper you were chatting with is a pal of – guess who? Dr Portch from Cockley Ford.'
'I know,' Newman said as he turned out of the car park and left Blakeney Quay behind. 'He told me the same thing yesterday when I came here on my own. Not a popular character, Dr Portch. Except with the skipper of that coaster, Caleb Fox…'
'Why did we come to Blakeney?' asked Harry Butler,
'Because of Tweed's experience up here. There were two places where things happened. Blakeney and Cockley Ford. And that barman told me yesterday the coaster was due in here today from Rotterdam with another cargo of that soya stuff. Also that the skipper knew Dr Portch. Obvious conclusion: have a look at Caleb Fox.'
'And our next move?'
'Visit the other place this evening, Cockley Ford. You and I, Harry, had better get kitted up before we pay the village a call. Denims and windcheaters. We're going in as two SAS types, the couple Tweed invented for protection when he went there.'
'You can play the part,' Butler pointed out. 'You had SAS training when you did that series of articles on them. But what about me?'
Newman glanced at his passenger's sturdy frame, tall build. 'You won't have any trouble looking the part. Box and Cox. I'll be the gabby one, do the talking. You play the silent partner.'
'And where do I come into this?' Nield called out.
'You come into it all right. You'll follow us in Tweed's Cortina parked back at Tuesday Market. Give me one of those compact walkie-talkies you brought, carry another yourself. You park half-way up the side road leading to Cockley Ford. If I call you come like a bat out of hell. Flash that fake warrant card in your wallet. You're police. Special Branch.'
'Sounds as though you're expecting trouble,' Nield commented hopefully.
'I just don't know what Harry and I may be walking into. When Tweed first mentioned Dr Portch the name rang a bell. I checked the newspapers two years ago in the British Museum reading room. Then, as you know, I went to Brighton where Portch came from. I was right. And that Caleb Fox made a mistake.'
'Which was?'
'The sort of mistake Tweed is good at spotting. The absence of something. During our whole conversation he never once mentioned that bomb placed on Paula Grey's doorstep. Funny, that. While I was in that bar the locals were talking about nothing else.'
'And Dr Portch? You said you were right about him,' Nield recalled.
'He could be a two-time murderer – who got away with it in both cases.'